The ingenious combination of techniques and tactics used in the Sales Funnel, widely employed in email marketing campaigns, can be adapted by your Digital Marketing agency and/or e-commerce agency for your online store 's e-commerce operations.
Such tactics and techniques allow you to systematically transform:
1. An unknown visitor to your store in lead (contact)
2. A lead in prospect (contact interested in your product)
3. A prospect into a customer (buyer)
4. A customer/buyer in customer/friend (loyal customer)
5. A customer/friend in a customer (customer who will always shop with you)
6. A customer who becomes an ambassador (who will speak highly of your brand to everyone)
To achieve this prodigious feat, it is neither so simple nor so easy. It takes hard work. However, those who manage to do so will reap such good results that strategy will eventually become a habit.
How, then, to turn a stranger into a customer of your e-commerce store? Here is a step-by-step summary:
1. Attract an audience to your store: invest in SEO content, sponsored links, social media, video marketing, brochures, flyers, posters and printed materials in general, radio and TV advertising, among other means (choose the most convenient ones), to increase your website's audience;
2. Select your audience: On your website, offer free content (an e-book relevant to people in your field, for example) in exchange for an email address or newsletter subscription. This way, you'll know that those who downloaded the free content are genuinely interested in what you have to say.
3. Build trust: People have downloaded your content, but they don't know you yet. Therefore, start sending them more free content to the email address they left on your website, with various tips, incentives, and motivations for them to read your free ebook. The secret is to start a long-term relationship, so emails should be sent periodically so that people remember you several times a day;
4. Initial Product: After a few emails, you'll already have access statistics (who clicked on which links), allowing you to offer them a very low-cost initial product, just to turn them into customers. The logic here is that it's easier to sell other products to someone who is already a customer, as you read in the post "Brazilians are more confident in online shopping, reports SPC," which I published a few days ago. Therefore, this low-cost initial product serves to transform a prospect into a customer;
5. Monitor customer steps: once a prospect has registered in your store, purchased the initial product you offered, and become a customer, you can monitor them through access statistics. That is, you will be able to check which buttons they clicked, where they didn't click, which products they added to their cart, which products they removed from their cart, etc. This will allow you to get to know your customer better, refine your advertising, and send them more precise ads with the goal of hitting the bullseye in the hearts and minds of your target audience;
6. Research your customers: continue sending relevant tips and content to your customers. From time to time, ask them to answer short satisfaction surveys in order to understand the most important dates for them, the changes (weddings, family events, graduations, etc.) that generate incredible sales opportunities;
7. Analyze the data: cross-reference information from website access, emails, in-store visits, and past purchases, among other factors, to try to predict what your customers will do in the future. If you notice, for example, that 5% of your female customers are buying the book "What is Journalism?" and that the same people accessed other products such as journalism t-shirts, journalism keychains, etc., you can conclude that they are "new students" who have just entered college and, therefore, you can target them with advertisements (print and/or online) with related content. You will be able to predict that in 4 years they will graduate and, therefore, you can offer them related products in the future, which will increase your sales.
Okay. Remember that the more trust customers have in you, the easier it will be to close sales in your online store . Therefore, create engaging sales pages for your products. Use amazing photos and text content with powerful sales arguments targeted to each customer group with specific needs. After all, the idea of the sales funnel is to personalize the commerce, improve the relationship, and thus build lifelong customer loyalty.
